The sleeve-terminal strips and blade-terminal strips of such a device to be tested normally have a comparatively large number of blades or sleeves, e.g. there may be one or several rows parallel to each other for each socket or terminal strip with 32 or more blades or sleeves in each row.
In the case of a blade strip there is usually a group of rigid metallic pins each of which is rectangular in cross section and which is pointed at its free end. This terminal strip can also be designated as a male connector.
The electrical or electronic device being tested has a circuit board, a wiring support which has wiring on it or the like with a large number of blade-terminal strips and/or sleeve-terminal strips usually, e.g. with ten to more than a hundred such strips.
The known testing unit for testing such a device has a number of complementary sleeve-terminal strips and/or blade-terminal strips corresponding to those of the device, which are attached at the end of a flexible cable which makes the electrical connection between them and the tester of the testing unit.
Up to now, to test an electrical or electronic device all the complementary terminal and/or sleeve-terminal strips continuously connected to the tester by the cable had to be connected by an operator individually one after the other to the associated sleeve-terminal strips and blade-terminal strips of the device manually. That required a considerable amount of time and effort. When all the blade-terminal strips and sleeve-terminal strips of the device were connected to the tester in this way, the device was tested for electrical faults.
After the testing is completed the complementary connected sleeve-terminal strips and blade-terminal strips must again be disconnected by hand from the device being tested which requires considerable time and puts undesirable stresses on the device. Also it is difficult, when the tester indicates a certain fault in the device, to provide access to the appropriate location of the clamped device being tested for removal of the fault.